Crater Lake, Oregon, USA
© Sheldon Nalos
The Halperts new baby blog!!! Check it out!!
Very cool site. Some very good looking recipes here. Check it out!
No need to worry. She’ll claim that it doesn’t affect her job performance (even though her judgement is in question) and is therefore able to carry on properly representing her constituents (presumably the sober as well as the drunk ones).
At least we know that Gordon Campbell is a shoulder for her to safely stagger to. He knows what it’s like (although who knows how much he really remembers) to be a bit over the limit.
I’m not a fan of the Olympics, and not just the ones in Vancouver. The idea of spending billions of dollars so underpaid athletes can generate massive ad revenues for TV networks and expose millions of couch potatoes to the nutritional wonders of Coca-Cola and McDonald’s is not popular in my little corner of the universe.
As I suggested in this space last week, the Olympic message of international peace and harmony is a sickening mirage. The wealthy nations of this planet don’t really care about the poor ones, despite the impressive aid efforts following natural disasters in places like Haiti and the eastern Indian Ocean.
Most of the time, we’re content to fritter away our lives on Facebook and numb our minds watching So You Think You Can Masticate Canada. Far-flung, poverty-stricken places like Bangladesh and Benin just don’t concern us until major disaster strikes — or the parade of nations marks the start of the Olympic Games.
But the hyperbole surrounding the Vancouver Games remains unwarranted, aside from the legitimate criticism directed against VANOC for practically whistling past the corpse of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.
Yes, Vancouver is too mild to host the Winter Games. Yes, the Olympic cauldron sits behind a fence that belongs in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. And yes, I believe I Believe to be one of the cheesiest pieces ever composed.
But this remains a series of athletic contests. When you strip away the corporate sponsorship and the bizarre juxtaposition of bald-faced nationalism against saccharine “we-are-the-world” sentiment, the Olympics are just a series of races between a bunch of people with unusually low body fat.
If the collective scorn of the planet’s media needs to be directed somewhere, why not somewhere else? Why not bemoan the motivations of machine-gun manufacturers and the people who buy shares in their companies? Or U.S. senators who lobby to maintain corn subsidies that continue to push impoverished people off farms in developing countries?
Or a Manitoba government that spends $2.3 million on an Olympic pavilion that opens a few weeks before the province announces a public-sector wage freeze? Oh, wait — I’m criticizing something Olympic-related again.
As Freep Parliament reporter Mia Rabson noted on her blog this week, Slate.com has taken the piss out of Manitoba House, this province’s apparently feeble attempt to put its finest face forward at the Olympics.
Apparently, while we’re showing the world an award-winning quilt, Saskatchewan is slinging beer and bison burgers.
Bartley Kives
Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
Carl Sagan (via seandanaher) (via itsfullofstars)
These are some beautiful hotel rooms, I must say. The one in Geneva is particularly inviting.
this looks really good.
All the latest HST information in one place. Let’s do what we can to end this #HST theft.
man, this union guy is really reaching here… ridiculous. just do your job (which you are paid quite well for) and shut up. stop trying to justify laziness and incompetence. it won’t fly. we’re not that stupid.
Google Super Bowl Ad
I LITERALLY CRIED. THIS IS THE BEST.
(via haleigh)
